Short Communication - Archives in Food and Nutrition (2020) Volume 3, Issue 3

Holistic Healing Village: Where Food is medicine

The earth is in great peril, due to the corporatization of agriculture, the rising climate crisis, and the ev-er-increasing levels of global poverty, starvation, and desertification on a massive scale. This present condition of global trauma is not “natural,” but a result of humanity’s destructive actions. According to Masanobu Fukuoka, it is reversible. We need to change not only our methods of earth stewardship, but also the very way we think about the relationship between human beings and nature.” Good Health today is a luxury rather than a right. Despite advanced technologies, research and vast expenditures to achieve perfect health, modern society is plagued with diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, allergies, pain, addiction, mental illness and more. The cause of diet and lifestyle diseases is multifaceted and complex to include stressful lifestyles, the breakdown of family and most importantly access to real, natural food. The quality and suitability of industrialized food and modern lifestyles are major factors. Food available to most people is far removed from what the human digestive system is designed to assimilate. Industrialized food is mass produced for weight, shelf-life and uniformity, it is contaminated by chemicals and is low in nutritional value. This is due to modern-day farming practices which are monoculture. Monoculture is the system of industrialized farming where large areas of the same crop are cultivated - even organic farming is mainly monoculture. In monoculture fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides are required, there is an overuse of water, increased evaporation, erosion and is an environmental disaster. Furthermore, it doesn’t create soil whereas in sustainable, natural systems of farming there is diversity, complexity and positive interactions creating soil, rich in microorganisms necessary to sustain life on earth. “Holistic Healing Village” offers the art of living in harmony with nature. By combining Ayurveda principles with education, experience and training in “natural farming techniques” a diet and lifestyle model is created in which health, healing and disease prevention can thrive. The Holistic Healing Village provides sustainable food production, sustainable living and a simple stress-free lifestyle.It can be a center of health education where communities can learn simple, sustainable living, natural farming, composting, recycling and reusing of natural resources. It can be the driving force behind innovation for living in harmony with nature where real food is the foundation. Ayurveda recognizes the interconnectivity of body, mind and spirit, and the importance of food in the healing process when it states that: - 

Abstract PDF